“You may be able to help a great deal,” Denby said more seriously, “but I don’t want you to act as if you were a criminal. Pass it off easily. Of course,”—he hesitated,—“I’ve had more experience in this sort of thing than you, and am more used to being up against it, but it will never do if you look as anxiously at everybody on the Mauretania as you do at the passers-by here. You can help me particularly by observing if I am the subject of special scrutiny.”

“That will be a cinch,” Monty asserted.

“Then start right away,” his mentor commanded. “We have been under observation for the last five minutes by someone I’ve never laid eyes on before.”

“Good Lord!” Monty cried. “It was that old priest who stared at us. I knew he was a fake. That was a wig he had on!”

“Try again,” Denby suggested. “It happens to be a woman and a very handsome one. As we went into Cartier’s she passed in a taxi. I only thought then that she was a particularly charming American or English woman out on a shopping expedition. When we came out she was in one of those expensive couturier’s opposite, standing at an upper window which commands a view of Cartier’s door. They may have been coincidences, but at the present moment, although we are sauntering along the Champs Elysées, she is pursuing us in another taxi. She has passed us once. When she went by she told the chauffeur to turn, but he was going at such a pace that he couldn’t pull up in time. He has just turned and is now bearing down on us. Take a look at the lady, Monty, so you will know her again.”

A sense of dreadful responsibility settled on Montague Vaughan. He was now entering upon his rôle of Denby’s aid and must in a few seconds be brought face to face with what was unquestionably an adventuress of the highest class. He knew all about them from fiction. She would have the faintest foreign accent, be wholly charming and free from vulgarity, and yet like Keats’ creation be a belle dame sans merci. But, he wondered uneasily, what would be his rôle if his friend fell victim to her charms?

He was startled out of his vain imaginings when Denby exclaimed: “By all that’s wonderful, she seems to know one of us, and it’s not I! You’re the fortunate man, Monty.”

A pretty woman with good features and laughing eyes was certainly looking out of a taxi and smiling right at him. And when he realized this, Monty’s depression was lifted and he sprang forward to meet her. “It’s Alice,” he cried.

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